The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art

Winner of the 2016 Will Eisner Comic Industry Award for Best Academic/Scholarly Work Winner of the 2016 Ray and Pat Browne Award for Best Edited Collection in Popular Culture and American Culture by the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Winner of the 2016 PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature When many think of comic books the first thing that comes to mind are caped crusaders and spandex-wearing super-heroes.

Perhaps, inevitably, these images are of white men (and more rarely, women).

It was not until the 1970s that African American superheroes such as Luke Cage, Blade, and others emerged.

But as this exciting new collection reveals, these superhero comics are only one small component in a wealth of representations of black characters within comic strips, comic books, and graphic novels over the past century.